Journal policy

The journal Pravo – teorija i praksa (eng. Law – Theory and Practice) is dedicated to promoting positive solutions in the normative, judicial and administrative practice. The journal deals with issues from all areas of law. Its sections are continually enriched by new content: current issues, views and opinions, original articles, new regulations, extracts from foreign law, comments on new regulations, comment on the existing court practice, overviews of monographs from seminars and conferences and conference proceedings. A large number of authors, research associates and renowned experts from all areas of law participate in the creation of the academic journal Pravo - teorija i praksa. Thanks to its highly relevant and quality content, the journal has gained an envious reputation both in our country and abroad and has become a useful and reliable reference book for everyday legal practice. The academic journal Pravo - teorija i praksa is intended for all jurists and judicial bodies, institutions, businesses, private companies and entrepreneurs, as well as all legal entities who wish to stay informed and get introduced to new regulations, as well as court and legal practice. The journal is supposed to promote lawful, efficient and successful procedures in everyday legal practice.

The journal Pravo – teorija i praksa publishes original papers that have not been published previously: original scientific papers, review papers, scientific critiques, professional papers, and reviews in the field of law.

Pravo – teorija i praksa is an Open Access journal.

Contributions to the journal shall be submitted in English and Serbian language (in Cyrillic script) in accordance with the Instructions for Authors.

The Journal is issued four times a year.

The journal is indexed in HeinOnline; DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals; ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences; Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL); Internet Archive; Publons; Dimension; Google Scholar; Index Copernicus; CrossRef; The Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia (M24); SCIndeks - Serbian Citation Index; doiSerbia; WorldCat; COBIS SR; The digital repository of the National Library of Serbia; Scilit.

Digital copies of the journal are archived in the Digital Repository of the National Library of Serbia, KOBSON, Serbian Citation Index, The Matica Srpska Library, Keepers Registry using PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) platform and also in the Internet Archive which is a non-profit library of millions of free books, articles, and etc.

Digital Archiving and Preservation (PKP PLN)

To safeguard the scholarly record, Pravo – teorija i praksa preserves its content in the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PLN)—a distributed, LOCKSS-based preservation service integrated with Open Journal Systems (OJS). The journal’s Version of Record and associated metadata are automatically deposited at regular intervals.

Scope of preservation. Deposits typically include:

Article full texts (PDF; HTML where applicable),
Machine-readable metadata and identifiers (e.g., DOI),
Supplementary materials when supplied by authors.

Trigger events and access. In case of catastrophic data loss, platform failure, or journal discontinuation, the PKP PLN enables restoration and continued access to preserved content.

References and registry.

ISSN registry entry for Pravo – teorija i praksa: https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2683-5711
About PKP PLN: https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-pn/

Editorial Policies

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Pravo – teorija i praksa will be published. The Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within 60-90 days from the date of the manuscript submission.

Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Editorial Board. In case one or more members of the Editorial Staff hold a conflict of interest regarding a submitted manuscript, these members of the Editorial Staff shall withdraw from the selection of reviewers and all decisions related to the manuscript.

Editorial Board shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

AUTHORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Pravo – teorija i praksa. Also, one author cannot have two manuscript in the same issue. Please note that posting of preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior publication. Authors should disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in Acknowledgements.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to Pravo – teorija i praksa are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Preprints and Prior Publication

The journal accepts submissions of manuscripts that have previously been posted as preprints on publicly accessible server platforms (e.g., Preprints.org). Such posting is not considered prior publication and does not affect the editorial decision regarding the peer review and publication of the manuscript, in line with COPE recommendations and contemporary publishing practice.

Authors are required, at the time of submission, to inform the editorial office of the existence of a preprint (indicating the name of the server, DOI, and URL). After the article has been published in the journal, authors should update the record on the preprint server and add the full reference and DOI of the version published in the journal.

Reporting standards

Pravo – teorija i praksa is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it - e.g., provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data - Data Sharing Policy.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Authorship

Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section.

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In order to be named on the author list one must have:

made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
contributed to the drafting the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND
agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed by selecting CRediT roles on the article submission form.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted only if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Acknowledgment of sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism. All papers published in Pravo – teorija i praksa are tested using iThenticate software.

Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy, and authors will submission of paper will be prohibited.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No competing interests were disclosed’.

A competing interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of competing interests include (but are not limited to):

individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies, should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘Competing interests’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the editorial policies of the journal Pravo – teorija i praksa.

ORCID

The journal asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work.

Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder.

Author Funding Disclosure

Authors must clearly disclose all sources of financial support for their research, including:

research grants,
institutional support,
private or commercial funding,
or any other financial contributions.

Funding statements should be included in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript. If no external funding was received, authors must state: “This research received no external funding.”

Conflict of Interest

Authors are responsible for declaring any potential conflicts of interest related to funding sources.

REVIEWERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Pravo - teorija i praksa does not currently allow the use of Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies such as ChatGPT or similar services for peer review. We strive to protect authors' rights and research confidentiality.

Reviewers must not recommend citations of work by themselves, close colleagues, another author, or the journal when it is not clearly necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript under review.

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Peer Review

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editorial Board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

A manuscript goes through the peer review process - Double-blind peer-review. Double-blind peer review means that reviewers are unaware of the identity of the authors, and authors are also unaware of the identity of reviewers. There are at least two reviewers. Under normal circumstances, the review process takes an average of one month. During the review process, the editor-in-chief may request that authors provide additional information, including primary data if necessary to make a judgment on the manuscript. The editor and reviewers must keep such information confidential and must not use it for any other purpose.

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editorial Board. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

In the main review phase, the Editorial Board sends submitted manuscripts to the two of reviewers’ experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help reviewers cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process, the Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Members of the editorial team/board/guest editors are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.

POST-PUBLICATION DISCUSSIONS

Pravo – teorija i praksa encourages post-publication debate either through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer.

Use of Large Language Models (LLM) and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools

Pravo – teorija i praksa conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Recommendations on Chatbots, ChatGPT and Scholarly Manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

In the preparation of manuscripts for publication in Pravo - teorija i praksa, AI tools may be used exclusively for the creation of AI-assisted, but not AI-generated content.

AI tools must not be used as a substitute for human critical thinking, scholarly judgment, or professional expertise. Artificial intelligence technologies must always be applied under direct human supervision and control. All intellectual content — including ideas, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions — must be exclusively the work of the authors.

Under no circumstances may an AI tool be listed as an author or co-author, nor may it be cited as the author of a referenced work.

Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI in the manuscript (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections.

Authors are responsible for the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of any content generated by tools based on large language models and generative AI and they must ensure that the cited references are correct and that the submission is free from plagiarism.

The use of AI tools is permitted only for limited linguistic and technical purposes, including:

grammar and spelling corrections;
stylistic refinement of text previously written by the authors;
assistance with formatting (tables, figures, charts, etc.), provided that such use is disclosed in the Acknowledgments;
technical assistance, such as code debugging.

Failure to disclose the use of AI tools in a manuscript constitutes a breach of publication ethics and, if confirmed, may result in rejection of the manuscript and the application of measures in accordance with the guidelines of relevant ethical bodies (e.g., COPE).

It is not permitted to use AI tools for:

generating substantial portions of the manuscript, particularly ideas, data, results, images, tables, or similar content;
modifying scientific arguments or interpretations;
altering data or generating references;
submitting a manuscript that is not the result of the authors’ own scholarly work.

In all cases, authors bear full responsibility for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of their work.

The use of AI tools in the research process underlying the manuscript is not prohibited, provided that such use is scientifically justified and described in detail in the Methods section or an equivalent part of the manuscript. A detailed description must include the name of the AI tool, the provider, the date of access, the prompt(s) used, and the purpose of use.

Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the peer review process. Editorial board and reviewers are likewise required to adhere to ethical principles concerning the use of AI tools. AI may be used only as support for work based on their own expertise. Editorial recommendations and decisions must not be delegated to AI systems. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports.

Declaration on Independent Work and the Use of AI Tools

I confirm that the submitted Article is the result of original and independent academic work by the author(s), based on our own intellectual effort, analysis, and interpretation.
No part of the manuscript was written, translated, paraphrased, or otherwise generated by artificial intelligence tools, bots, automated systems, or machine learning algorithms (e.g., ChatGPT, Bard, Gemini, Claude, DeepL, etc.).
The manuscript does not contain automatically generated content or data visualizations created using AI software, and any tools used (e.g., for grammar checking or referencing) were employed under human supervision without altering the scientific substance.
I/we affirm full responsibility for the content, structure, arguments, and conclusions of the manuscript.
I/we are fully aware of the ethical responsibilities and possible academic consequences of misrepresentation, including the undisclosed use of AI-based technologies in academic publishing.

Procedures for dealing with complaints and appeals

Anyone may inform the editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behavior or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

INVESTIGATION

Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Authors who wish to appeal a decision regarding their manuscript may submit a written appeal within 30 days of receiving the editorial decision. The appeal must clearly state the reasons for requesting a reconsideration and provide supporting information or evidence. A response to the appeal will normally be provided within 4–6 weeks. The decision made after the appeals process is final.

Appeals should be addressed to:

Prof. Jelena Matijašević, Editor-in-Chief

Email: jelena@pravni-fakultet.info

Our journal is committed to maintaining the highest editorial and ethical standards. We welcome complaints that help us to improve our processes and uphold the integrity of scholarly publishing. Complaints may relate to:

the editorial and peer review process,
potential research or publication misconduct,
the behavior of editors, reviewers, or staff,
or any other concern regarding the operation of the journal.

A formal response will normally be provided within 4-6 weeks. The outcome of the complaints process is final.

Complaints should be submitted in writing to:

Prof. Jelena Matijašević, Editor-in-Chief

Email: jelena@pravni-fakultet.info

MINOR MISCONDUCT

Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding fairly minor misconduct.

MAJOR MISCONDUCT

The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When dealing with complaints and appeals, the editorial team will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts.

Anonymisation, confidentiality, and informed consent

Anonymisation Policy

Purpose
This journal requires authors to protect participant identity and privacy by removing or masking direct and indirect identifiers from manuscripts and all supplementary materials. Where there is any doubt that anonymity can be preserved, written consent for publication is required before submission.

Scope and definitions

Direct identifiers include names, initials, exact dates of birth, faces in photographs, social media handles, email addresses, medical record numbers, or exact geolocation.
Indirect (quasi) identifiers include combinations of demographic or clinical details that could reasonably re-identify an individual (e.g., rare disease + small community + age band).
Anonymisation must not distort scientific meaning (e.g., use cell suppression or aggregation rather than inventing data).

Minimum author requirements

Remove/blur faces and identifying marks in images; simple “eye-bar” masking is insufficient.
Generalise dates and small-cell counts; consider data minimisation in tables/figures.
State in the Methods or Ethics section how anonymisation was performed.
If anonymity cannot be guaranteed, obtain and retain written consent for publication (see “Consent for Personal Data and Media”).

Editorial checks

Editors may request a description of anonymisation steps and, where necessary, evidence that consent for publication was obtained.

2) Confidentiality Policy

Commitment
The journal safeguards the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities (where applicable), and participant information obtained during editorial handling. Materials under review must not be shared or used for purposes other than peer review.

Expectations for editors and reviewers

Do not disclose any content from submissions without written permission from the Editor-in-Chief.
Do not retain or use data, analyses, or ideas from submissions for personal advantage.
Report any suspected privacy breaches immediately to the Editor-in-Chief.

Participant information in publications

Only information essential to scientific understanding will be published, and then either anonymised or accompanied by explicit consent for publication (see related policies below).

Complaints
Suspected breaches of confidentiality will be investigated according to COPE guidance. Contact: Prof. Jelena Matijašević, Editor-in-Chief, email: jelena@pravni-fakultet.info

3) Informed Consent for Participation in the Study

Requirement
Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants must state:

the approving research ethics committee/IRB (name and institution),
the approval number/code and date, and
that informed consent for participation was obtained from all participants or their legally authorised representatives.

Studies must adhere to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Minors and vulnerable groups

For minors, obtain consent from a legal guardian and age-appropriate assent from the child where feasible.

Where to place the statement

Include an “Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate” subsection in the Methods (or an Ethics section) with IRB/EC details and consent wording.

Example wording for authors

“This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of [Institution] (Approval No. XXXX, Date). Written informed consent for participation was obtained from all participants (or their legal guardians). The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki.”

Animal studies

For animal research, state ethics approval and compliance with EU Directive 2010/63/EU and report according to ARRIVE 2.0.

4) Consent for Personal Data, Images, Audio, or Video in Publications

When consent for publication is required

If any identifiable personal data or recognisable images/audio/video will be published, authors must obtain written consent for publication that explicitly acknowledges online, open-access distribution. Masking the eye region alone is not an adequate de-identification method.

Minimum elements of the consent for publication

Clear description of what will be published (text, photos, audio/video).
Statement that materials may be freely accessible online and redistributed.
For EEA data subjects, consent must meet GDPR standards (freely given, specific, informed, unambiguous). Retain dated copies; provide to editors on request.

Special populations

For minors, obtain legal-guardian consent and, where appropriate, the child’s assent; identifiable patients should be shown the manuscript to be published before consenting.

Example wording for authors

“Written consent for publication of identifiable information/images was obtained from the participant (or legal guardian). The consent form states that the article and associated media will be openly available on the internet.”

RETRACTION POLICY

The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty), unethical research or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by Pravo – teorija i praksa: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

Research data policy

Pravo – teorija i praksa encourages authors to share research data that are required for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or enhance the published manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary.

ETHICAL AND SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, the manuscript must include:

a description of the restrictions on the data;
what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about the data sharing; and
all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Data protection issues

Where human data cannot be effectively de-identified, data must not be shared in order to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given explicit written consent that their identifiable data can be made publicly available.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

an explanation of the data protection concern;
any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about data sharing; and
where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

In addition, data should be linked to from a Data Accessibility Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication. If data is not being made available within the journal publication, a statement from the author should be provided to explain why. When depositing data for a submission, the below should be considered:

The repository the data is deposited in must be suitable for this subject and have a sustainability model.
The data must be deposited under an open license that permits unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licenses should only be used if a valid reason (e.g., legal) is present.
The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
The deposited data must have been labeled in such a way that a 3rd party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file).
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research subject should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).
A ‘Data Accessibility Statement’ should be added to the submission, prior to the reference list, providing the details of the data accessibility, including the DOI linking to it. If the data is restricted in any way, the reasoning should be given.

Ethics Approval Statement

All manuscripts reporting research involving human participants or animals must include a clear statement regarding ethics approval.

Human Studies
Authors must identify the ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB) that approved the study, including the approval number/code, and confirm that the study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. A statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants (or their legal guardians) must also be included.

Animal Studies
Research involving animals must include a statement that the study was approved by the appropriate ethics committee and conducted in compliance with recognized standards such as the EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments and/or the ARRIVE guidelines.

Manuscripts without Formal Approval
If ethics approval was not required, authors must provide a clear explanation and indicate how ethical standards were otherwise maintained.

Example statement for manuscripts:
“This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of [Institution name] (Approval No. XXXX, Date). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.”

Open Access policy

Pravo – teorija i praksa is an Open Access journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

Pravo - teorija i praksa is published under an Open Access license since 2014.

Article processing charge

After the manuscript receives two positive reviews, and before publication, for the cost of publishing (APCs), the author(s) shall pay a sum of 25,000.00 dinars (250 euros for authors from abroad) per paper. The Article Processing Charge is a fee charged to authors to allow for immediate, unrestricted access to the full version of the article. Please note that the payment of this charge does not guarantee acceptance of the manuscript for publication and does not influence the outcome of the review procedure.

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

Authors can deposit author’s preprint, author’s postprint (accepted version) and publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based and general-purpose repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process, at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

COMMITMENT TO RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH ASSESSMENT (DORA)

Pravo – teorija i praksa endorses the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) - https://sfdora.org/ and affirms its commitment to responsible research evaluation.

In line with DORA principles:

Quality of research above metrics

We assess scholarly work based on its content, methodological rigor, scientific contribution, and ethical standards, rather than relying solely on impact factor or other journal-based metrics.

Transparency and integrity

We support open and transparent science, promote ethical conduct in research and publishing, and encourage authors to highlight the value and impact of their work for the academic community.

Equal opportunity for all authors

We do not discriminate against researchers based on institutional affiliation, geographical location, or publication history. We pay particular attention to supporting early-career researchers.

Rejecting inappropriate reliance on single metrics

We recognize that the journal impact factor does not reflect the quality of individual research articles, and we commit not to use it as the primary measure of scholarly contribution.

Support for diverse forms of research contributions

We value a wide range of scholarly outputs – from theoretical and empirical studies to literature reviews, case studies, teaching materials, and innovative research methods.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Authors can enter the separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published paper (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

METADATA POLICY

The journal metadata are freely accessible to all, and freely reusable by all, under the terms of the Creative Commons Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Developed by EIFL, inspired by:

Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing. Directory of Open Access Journals. https://doaj.org/apply/transparency/(accessed 2023-01-06).
Core practices. COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics. https://publicationethics.org/core-practices(accessed 2022-12-10).
Policies. Open Research Europe. https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/about/policies(accessed 2022-11-08).
Journal Policies. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. https://www.glossa-journal.org/site/journal-policies/(accessed 2023-01-06).

DATA AVAILABILITY POLICY

Introduction

In line with best practices for transparency and open science, Pravo – teorija i praksa requires all manuscripts to include a Data Availability Statement. This statement must clearly describe where the data supporting the findings of the study can be accessed, and under what conditions.

Data availability enhances the reproducibility of research, allows verification of findings, and increases the overall impact and credibility of scientific work. Manuscripts submitted without a Data Availability Statement will not be accepted for publication.

Author Responsibilities

Authors are responsible for:

Ensuring that the data supporting their research findings are preserved in a secure and accessible form.
Providing accurate and verifiable links (URLs or DOIs) to repositories where the data can be accessed.
Stating clearly any restrictions on data availability due to ethical, legal, or commercial considerations.
Confirming whether the data are included in the article, supplementary materials, or hosted elsewhere.

Acceptable Forms of Data Availability

Authors may choose one of the following standard options, depending on the nature of their research and data:

Openly available data in a repository with DOI

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [DOI link].

Openly available data in a repository without DOI

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL].

Data derived from public domain resources

The data that support the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI]. These data were derived from the following resources: [list resources].

Data available within the article or supplementary materials

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.

Data available upon request

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Data available upon request due to ethical or privacy restrictions

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. Restrictions apply due to [ethical/legal/privacy] considerations.

Embargoed data due to commercial reasons

The data will be available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI] following a [period] embargo to allow for commercialization of the research findings.

Non-digital or third-party data

Non-digital data supporting this study are curated at [location].
The data are available from [third party]. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data.

No new data generated

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Data not available due to restrictions

Due to the nature of this research, participants did not consent to public data sharing; therefore, supporting data are not available.

Journal Policy Enforcement

All submitted manuscripts must contain one of the above Data Availability Statements.
The statement should be placed at the end of the manuscript, before the References section.
Editors and reviewers may request clarification if the statement is incomplete, inconsistent, or does not align with the research described.
Manuscripts without a compliant Data Availability Statement will be returned to the authors for revision prior to acceptance.